Hospital trustees extend deadline on major decision

Friday

Jun 13, 2014 at 2:28 PMJun 13, 2014 at 2:36 PM

By Don Reiddwreid@aol.comCOLDWATER  Community Health Center of Branch County (CHC) trustees have moved until June 25 a final deadline for hard number proposals from health organizations willing to take over or partner with the financially troubled hospital.Branch County Commission Chairman Don Vrablic said a June 9 meeting to consider those proposals did not take place as scheduled. On Thursday Vrablic said delays in getting final pension fund figures from Michigan Employee Retirement System (MERS) delayed providing information to the finalists so they could prepare proposals.The chairman said Bronson Methodist Hospital non-profit group from Kalamazoo has withdrawn its interest. The two entities still interested in CHC are non-profit Sparrow from Lansing and Community Health Systems (CHS), a large, 204-hospital, publicly-traded for profit system from Brentwood, Tennessee.Branch County has converted its pension funding for all county employees from John Hancock to MERS  but the effective date was delayed from May until June 15.Vrablic said understands CHS "would seriously look at paying off the hospital's (pension) liability.""Thats one of the things we are trying to put together  just what that liability is," Vrablic explained.The chairman said the figure for the liability is somewhere around $20 million. If CHS took over CHC, new employees would be covered by a defined contribution pension plan.The current county system is a defined benefit, which because of the 2008 recession has been underfunded. If CHS did pay off the hospital portion of liability for current employees  which make up about half the pension enrollees  the other county pension programs would get credit and not have to make up as much to bring the system into balance.MERS has proposed the county catch up over 10 to 20 years on the deficit.Vrablic said he did not believe Sparrow would not pay off any liability but would go to a defined contribution plan for new hires.The hospital trustees had hoped to have a final recommendation to the county commission on the future of the county-owned hospital by June 30.